log4p

Yesterdag I had an interview at a major Dutch broadcaster for the secondment (=detachering?) position of Technical Lead / Architect for a huge Web 2.0/AJAX extension on their existing webapplication(s). I wasn’t the only one in the race; Ordina had sent a possible candidate as well.

But guess what, today I recieved the good news! They selected me! Main reasons for their decision included my working knowledge of AJAX, my proposed approach (rapid prototyping / MoSCoW), my working knowledge of modern frameworks and last but not least my enthusiasm.

I’m not really shure whether I can give more details on the project, so you’ll have to wait for it until I know more about the ‘confidential’ markings in the project proposal.

YES!!! Today I succeeded my Java SE Intermed exam with a score of 97%, which means I missed only one question:

StringBuffer methods are all synchronized.

true or false?

and, yes, woohoo I got my Orange belt.

Today I passed the JDBC Basic and Hibernate Certif exams!

JDBC Basic

02-27-2006

exams page

Hibernate Certif

02-27-2006

exams page

In a previous post I mentioned two Finalist teams participating in the RAD Race event. The following post (Dutch!) contains the comments of the Ruby/Rails team on the ir results:
http://rubyenrails.nl/articles/2006/02/27/rad-race-nog-niet-gewonnen

Seems Ruby/Rails did very well! We’ll have to wait another month for final results… I’ll keep you posted!

After finding out about technorati (from the site: Technorati is the authority on what’s going on in the world of weblogs) by clicking the icon on the railsguru site I discoverd something really neat.

Read more

Tomorrow I will hear whether I’m going to be the architect/team-lead on a major web 2.0 project, therefor I decided to have a look at the current state of some ajax frameworks. Since I have used prototype on a couple of projects before I decided to have a look around to get to know some of the other options.
Yesterday I started playing with DWR (Direct Web Remoting). It is a nice little framework to expose java method calls and beans to javascript using the XMLHttpRequest. To set it up you just add the dwr jar to your classpath, configure to dwr servlet in your web.xml and configure which methods and beans to expose in a dwr.xml config file (for more details on getting stared look here). After this dwr allows you to access your serverside java methods using javascript! Pretty amazing!

If a method returns a POJO which is configured in the dwr.xml file it is automatically ‘converted’ to a javascript object; this functionality makes working with DWR a breeze, and really intuitive… it feels like extending your java codebase into the client!

Using frappr people can generate maps containing members of a specific community. Someone decided to start a map containg Java (Black Belt) developers! Not to many people in the Netherlands yet though.

Today we had a company ‘borrel’ (Dutch for getting some drinks in a pub together..) and a nice dinner. No specific reason. After the drinks we went to a restaurant for dinner… and gues where we went. We went to the same (obscure) szechuan restaurant as we went to on my parents wedding anniversary 4,5 years ago. Déjà vu, nothing had changed…. Maybe I had the same dish I had years ago…!

I recieved the following e-mail from Google;

Hello Peter Maas,

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher’s site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks generated by:

- a publisher on his own web pages
- a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads
- automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software
- a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payment. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers.

So far for the Google ads…

I just passed the ‘Servlet basic exam! My current JBB level is 21 knowledge points… but still no exam to get my orange belt .

Servlet Basic

02-23-2006

exams page

By the way, if you look at the JBB site you might just notice the huge Finalist logo. After me and one of my colleagues being really enthusiastic about the project the sales department had a closer look and deemed the project interesting for recruitment and (still to develop) B2B solutions. Part of the deal is that Finalist will put effort in exteding the availlable exams and questions!